by Ben Rehder
Armando jerked awake from a nightmare and the sudden movement made his head throb. But he hardly noticed it, because the content of the nightmare was lingering as he woke, and he was trying to prevent it from slipping away.
Armando had just been assaulted again in his dream.
By a redheaded man. The redheaded man, theoretically.
It seemed so real. Armando had pulled into the convenience store, parked, then dialed Sharon’s number. He stepped from his Prius, phone to his ear, and began to go inside. He wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings, but this was Johnson City, not some big, dangerous city. Nothing to worry about out here, right?
Sharon answered, and Armando said hello, and then—
Fucking faggot.
Armando heard it, looked up, and—
WHAM!
A massive jolt, and then he was on the pavement, head spinning. What in the hell had just happened? It had had the startling force and impact of a car wreck. He put his hand to his face to staunch the flow of blood that was dripping from his face. He could feel split skin. Teeth missing.
He realized there was a man towering over him.
Armando looked up—way up—and there he was. The redheaded man. Armando saw his face. Not clearly, but he got a sense of it. The shape, the proportions, the angle of the jaw.
Lying in the hospital bed, Armando concentrated on that face. Trying to hold on to it. Memorize it as best he could. And he was wondering—was this entire dream, including the face, something his imagination had conjured up to fill in the blanks? Or was it an accurate memory? Could he trust it? After the assault, had he come to just long enough to see the man’s face? More important, if his memory was coming back, would the details become sharper and crisper over time? Would that face come into focus?
“What’s the latest with the mysterious Russian woman?” Garza asked.
“Aleksandra Babikova,” Marlin said. He was tempted to grab another donut, but he resisted.
“Right.”
“Don’t know anything new about her, but I managed to track down her sister on Facebook. She got back to me once, and now I’m waiting to hear back again. With luck, she’ll give me a phone number.”
“Does the sister live in Dallas, too?”
“No, still in Russia, according to her Facebook account.”
“Didn’t you tell me the other day that you have an address for Aleksandra in Dallas?”
“Yeah, if it’s current.”
Marlin knew what Garza was thinking. He’d been thinking the same thing himself. Like it or not, it might be time for a road trip.
Red O’Brien was acutely aware of his own shortcomings. His IQ landed in a disappointing part of the bell curve. He had very few unique professional skills or qualifications. Neither his looks nor his personality had ever garnered him any great success with the ladies. He was admittedly a slacker in the area of personal hygiene. He couldn’t sing, dance, write, draw, or even tell a joke particularly well. He tended to associate with persons of questionable character. Hell, his own character was questionable—which explained the dozens of citations, fines, garnishments, indictments, levies, and other assorted penalties and sanctions imposed on him by various federal, state, county, and city agencies and organizations over the years.
But he did have a finely honed bullshit detector.
He saw this as a major strength that he had grown to heed and respect. Whether this ability was borne of an innate skepticism or a learned distrust, Red could identify bullshit like nobody’s business. Which wasn’t to say that he could spot every last bit of bullshit he ever heard. That was nearly impossible. Some bullshit slipped past him, but that bullshit tended to be trivial.
For instance, if someone mentioned that Keystone Light was on sale at the Super S, it was doubtful that Red’s bullshit detector would go off, because why would someone make something like that up? And if they did, what would they gain? And what would it matter if Red believed them? So, yeah, someone could bullshit about that if they really wanted to, and Red might not know it.
But if that same person said they were selling a 15-year-old Ford F-150 with only seventy thousand miles on it—and that person wasn’t a little old lady, a shut-in, or a hermit—Red’s bullshit detector would go on high alert. If one of Red’s friends said they’d hit three doves with one shotgun blast, another alert. If a drunk in a bar bragged about the time he whipped two bikers at once without even spitting out his cigarette, Red could almost hear the bells and whistles going off.
Conversely, someone could have a fantastic reason to bullshit, but Red would think they were telling the truth—and later he’d learn that he was right. Like with Grady Beech and the tattooed pig. When Armando had pointed out that the whole thing might be bullshit, Red was concerned. But they had later learned that it wasn’t bullshit, and Red had realized in hindsight that his bullshit detector hadn’t gone off.
Honestly, Red didn’t know why it worked. He wasn’t sure why some things set the detector off and others didn’t, but he figured it was a complicated formula having to do with the level of plausibility of the alleged occurrence, minus the incentive for someone to make it up, divided by the reputation of the person making the claim, multiplied by the personal price Red might pay for believing it. Or who the hell knows, but it worked, and that was the important thing.
So, the previous afternoon and evening, after Jack Chambers had said that the bounty pig had been shot, when Red’s bullshit detector began to give a faint but persistent ping, Red listened. And he began to think. Wouldn’t it make sense that someone would spread that rumor eventually? Red had been listening to the local and regional radio stations ever since, waiting to hear it from a reliable source, but nobody had been able to confirm it. Lots of talk, but no details. Why isn’t the winner coming forward? everyone was asking. Why wait? Red figured that was because there wasn’t—
“Where the hell you going?” Billy Don asked.
They were in Red’s truck on Highway 281 heading south. They’d passed the sheriff’s office and El Charro Mexican Restaurant and Whittington’s Jerky, and Red had kept on going past the city limits, because he was preoccupied, and because he was growing tired of the search for the redheaded man.
“Jesus, how long do you wanna keep driving around?” Red asked, pulling into the left lane for a U-turn at the next crossover.
“As long as it takes,” Billy Don replied. “He’s gotta be around here somewhere.”
They’d visited nearly every retail business in town, and quite a few waitresses and cashiers had reported seeing the guy. But Red and Billy Don hadn’t seen him yet themselves. Red had had the smart idea to visit the only two motels in Johnson City, but that was a dead end. At the first motel—the Best Western—the clerk said they didn’t have a guy like that staying there. At the second motel—a little mom-and-pop place called the Hill Country Inn—the clerk, a kid no older than twenty, said, “Sorry, but it’s against policy to reveal information about our guests.”
“So he is a guest?” Red said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“So he isn’t a guest?”
“Didn’t say that either.”
“Well, it’s one or the other,” Red said.
“Obviously.”
Smart-aleck punk.
Red tried another tack, slipping a bill from his pocket and discreetly placing it on the counter. “How ’bout you blink twice if the guy is staying here?”
The kid looked at the bill and laughed. “Is that a joke?”
A dollar didn’t go as far as it used to. Red dug around and came out with a five, but the kid said, “Look, I’m not taking a bribe. I could lose my job. I’m the interim assistant day manager.”
“Whoop-de-doo,” Red said, because by now it was apparent that the kid wasn’t going to cooperate. “I think that’s how Donald Trump got his start.”
“It sure wasn’t by taking dollar bribes from rednecks.”
Red hadn’t
been able to think of a good comeback, so he’d snatched his money off the counter and left.
Now, as he drove through Johnson City for the umpteenth time, he said, “He could be staying in Blanco. We haven’t even checked there yet. All the motels are full up here, so maybe he’s staying down there.”
Red didn’t really want to drive the fourteen miles to Blanco and start the search all over again, but Billy Don was set on finding the guy, and if that’s what it was going to take before they could start hunting the pig again, Red was resigned to getting it done as quickly as possible.
“Don’t forget Dripping Springs,” Billy Don said. “Marble Falls. Wimberley.”
Jesus. They could be chasing this jerk for days.
CHAPTER 29
Dexter Crabtree was still in a fairly deep mental fog when he called the Wal-Mart in Marble Falls for the second time. Had to deal with the damn automated menu again, but he finally got a real person. A woman who sounded like she was chewing food while she talked. She said Vera Spillar wasn’t working this morning. Great. Does she work this afternoon? The woman didn’t know.
Dexter hung up and swiveled—slowly, so as to avoid vertigo—toward his computer. Lot of people nowadays didn’t have a landline, preferring a cell phone only. But he got lucky and found a listing for her in one of the online directories.
He dialed.
She answered after three rings. His name had obviously popped up on Caller ID, because she said, “Isn’t this kind of stupid, calling me at home?”
Well, shit. She was right. That’s how out of it he was. Big mistake. He blamed it on the fact that he was still reeling from the blow to his head yesterday when he’d hit the pavement. The ER doctor hadn’t wanted to let him leave, saying he might have a concussion, and because Dexter’s vital signs were all over the place. Dexter hadn’t told the doc about the Adderall, of course. He had no intention of submitting to a battery of tests to figure out what was wrong with him—especially when he knew exactly what the problem was. He just needed to dial his usage back a bit, that’s all. No big deal. Didn’t need to listen to a lecture from some young doctor.
“I had no other way to reach you,” he said to Vera Spillar, trying to put some attitude in his voice, because he didn’t like this woman talking down to him.
“That don’t make it any smarter. I’ve been doing some reading on the Internet, and we both could get in major trouble. I didn’t realize this was such a big deal.”
“Didn’t I already tell you that? But as long as you keep your mouth shut...”
She laughed. “I ain’t got a lot to keep it shut about so far. You send that money or what?”
His head was throbbing, and this raging bitch was making it worse.
“That’s why I’m calling. Ran into a little delay.”
“What kind of delay?” She sounded suspicious.
So he told her exactly what had happened. Sort of. Instead of saying he fainted and cracked his head, he said somebody came up from behind and waylaid him. The robber stole the cash and his Mercedes, which was still missing. Probably in some chop shop by now, or inside a trailer headed for Mexico. Cops said they’d call if they found it. He wasn’t holding his breath.
When he finished with the story, Vera Spillar said, “Rough break.”
“Nine stitches,” Dexter said. “They got me on hydrocodone.” And now he was wondering, for the first time, if the painkillers would interact with the Adderall. He should check into that. Could be dangerous.
“I thought you were a tough guy,” she said. “Some kind of stud back in the day.”
My fucking god, this woman was a ball breaker.
“I’m just telling you what happened.”
“I feel your pain,” she said, being sarcastic, “but it ain’t my problem.”
“I never said it was,” he said, gritting his teeth, and starting to lose his patience. “But you won’t get a package today. That’s what I’m saying.”
“You got one more day,” she said, “or our deal is off.”
“I’ll send it this afternoon, overnight express. You’ll have it tomorrow.”
“Don’t need to know the details. Just send it.”
She hung up, and that was a good thing, because that meant she didn’t hear the long and colorful string of verbal abuse that followed.
“I might have to run up to Dallas,” Marlin said into his cell phone, after he returned to his office within the sheriff’s department. He’d noticed lately that he tended to use his cell phone even when a landline was available. Funny, because for years he had resisted owning a cell phone.
“Oh, yeah? What for?” Phil Colby replied.
“Need to track down a possible witness on a case.”
“When?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Maybe tomorrow. Or I might go ahead and leave this afternoon.”
There was a silence on the line for a moment. Then Colby said, “And considering some of the things that shithead said at the café yesterday...”
“Yeah. Would you mind checking on Nicole?”
“Of course not.”
“Does that make me a sexist pig?”
“Well, considering that Nicole is probably more capable of taking care of herself than either of us are at taking care of ourselves, then yeah, probably.”
“True.”
“Plus, I’ve seen her shoot. She puts us both to shame.”
“Agreed.”
“And she’s generally smarter than both of us, don’t you think?”
“Almost certainly.”
“In fact, now that I think about it, maybe you should be asking Nicole to check on me instead.”
“That might be right, based on the rumors I’m hearing,” Marlin said.
“What rumors?”
“That you mouthed off to Weems in the parking lot after we had lunch.”
“Mouthed off? When have you known me to mouth off?”
“Just about every waking moment.”
“Okay, but I didn’t mouth off to Weems.”
“What would you call it?”
“Uh, attempting to reason with a man of limited intellect.”
“What a coincidence. That’s what I’m doing right now.”
“I see what you did there, you clever bastard.”
Marlin paused for a moment. After his meeting with Garza and Tatum, he had hoped to find a message waiting from Tatyana, with contact information for Aleksandra, but Tatyana hadn’t responded. He said, “Seriously, Weems is not a pushover. He’s dangerous.”
“Hold on a sec.” A few seconds later, Colby said, “Hear this?”
A sound followed. Recognizable. Colby had just racked the slide on his nine-millimeter Glock semi-automatic.
“I don’t know whether to be comforted or concerned,” Marlin said.
“Everything will be fine. Go to Dallas. I can crash at your place if you want. That is, if you can trust your wife to keep her mitts off me.”
“I’m pretty sure she could control herself, but no, I don’t think that’s necessary. Just maybe give her a call at some point. Or swing by.”
“You got it.”
“And if it turns I’ll out be coming back home tonight, I’ll let you know.”
“Deal.”
When they hung up, Marlin checked his Facebook account, just to make sure he hadn’t received any messages. He was alerted by email anytime someone sent a message, but he’d noticed there was sometimes a delay of several hours.
There was no message. In fact, when he checked, he couldn’t find Tatyana’s previous reply, or any of the communication between them. He checked his friends list and Tatyana Babikova was no longer on it.
She’d unfriended him. Not just unfriended him, but blocked him, too.
Dustin Bryant was lying in his bed in the motel room, watching mindless crap on TV and trying not to think of anything at all. But it was hard. He hated mornings in the motel room, because it meant being cooped up with Gilbert for so damn
long. And Gilbert was always massively hungover, which made him surly.
But there wasn’t a good reason to leave the motel room until lunchtime, was there? Do what? Drive around? No sense hunting pigs during the daytime, because pigs moved mostly at night. Can’t hunt around the clock, so it made sense to hunt after dark, when the odds were the best. Rest up during the day.
“Turn the damn channel,” Gilbert said from his own bed. “What is this shit we’re watching?”
Dustin had thought Gilbert was snoozing, but no such luck. In response, instead of changing the channels, Dustin tossed the remote in Gilbert’s direction. It landed on the mattress beside him.
Really, fuck all this.
Dustin was starting to lose all respect for himself. Why was he still scared of Gilbert? Dustin was honest enough to admit to himself that, yeah, he was scared of Gilbert. But why? The man outside the café yesterday had proven that Gilbert wasn’t necessarily as tough as he thought he was. You could back him down if you stood up to him. If you had the balls. Maybe that man had been crazy to test Gilbert like that, but it had worked.
Dustin, on the other hand, always caved. Always did what Gilbert said. That’s why they were still here, in Johnson City, instead of back home. Dustin wondered why he couldn’t just face up to Gilbert and say, “Me and Dylan are hitting the road. You can come with us, or you can stay here, it don’t matter to me. But if you’re coming, pack your bags, ’cause we’re leaving in ten minutes.”
He imagined saying those words, but they just wouldn’t come. The man yesterday had called Gilbert a coward, but Dustin figured Gilbert wasn’t the only coward in the room.
Now Dustin could feel his phone vibrating again on his hip. Crap. He didn’t react. Didn’t want Gilbert to know.
“I’m going to the Coke machine,” he said a few minutes later, lifting himself off the mattress. “You want anything?”
“Ginger ale,” Gilbert said. “Couple of cans.” Ginger ale was Gilbert’s favorite mixer, which meant he’d be drinking whiskey soon, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Great.